You Should See Me in a Crown(26)
I look around at the Commons and marvel at the sheer magnitude of campaign posters. It’s like Rachel Collins’s giant face on a banner yesterday was enough to kick everyone into overdrive overnight.
On one, Lucy and Quinn pose back-to-back in their pom uniforms on the football field. On others, Jaxon Price poses with the 3A state champion football trophy from last year, with the caption MAKE THE WINNING COCAPTAIN YOUR WINNING KING emblazoned across it—which is pretty bad but somehow still better than what Rachel has going on in her obnoxiously boring banner. And in the center of all of them, somehow managing to cut through all the noise, is Jordan’s face. His posters are elegant; they look like masterful recreations of President Obama’s official portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. Someone has done a very impressive Kehinde Wiley impression, with Jordan at the center where President Obama should be. There are no words, but then again, he doesn’t need them. The imagery is enough. His message is simple: You know royalty when you see it.
“There’s something truly energizing about the vigor of the student body in this moment,” Stone sighs. She walks up with a green juice in her hand, and I’m thinking maybe that’s what’s making her so positive this early in the day. I take a sip of the caramel cloud macchiato Britt handed me anyway.
“You know what would energize me?” Britt asks. “If Marino would get here already. I would like to get these posters up before it’s time for me to file for social security.”
We go ahead and start hanging the posters without G, and even though the idea of my face being plastered all over the school makes me sick to my stomach, I have to admit they look pretty incredible. Britt designed them herself.
We took the photo a few days ago, but it looks so different now. What was originally just me holding my clarinet and standing in front of a white wall at the Marinos’ house is now me holding my clarinet with a gold Basquiat-inspired crown photoshopped on my head, overlaid with a bright, Andy Warhol–like color scheme that reads: HIT THE RIGHT NOTE. VOTE LIGHTY FOR PROM QUEEN.
We leave some in the Commons, of course. But we decide to hit the band, theater, and choir hallways extra hard. If anybody can vibe with what we have going, it’ll be my kin—the performing-arts geeks.
Time flies by. Gabi never shows, and I feel a little relieved. When the first students begin pouring into the hallways, we’ve hung every one of the posters and no one has gotten into a fight or had a panic attack. And considering our track record, I have to count this as a winning morning.
The show-choir kids are hosting a huge competition this weekend, and one of the volunteer activities this week is helping them set up for it. When I show up to the choir room after school, the director of the choirs, a short woman with a big voice and a black jumpsuit, is barking directions at the volunteers from behind a Clavinova. Everyone is already buzzing around like very frightened worker bees. Even the Prom Projectioners have been scared off.
“You two!” She points at me, and I turn to see Mack sliding down her headphones as she kicks up her skateboard into her free hand. “I need chairs stacked in the rehearsal room and pushed against the wall. Right now!”
Mack and I practically trip over each other to get out of the room before the ground opens up to an alternate dimension—one where I can’t read music like the rest of those Broadway babies and am totally comfortable doing jazz squares in front of the entire student body—and swallows us whole. Once we’re in the clear, we look at each other with raised eyebrows for a moment before bursting out laughing. It might be nerves, it might be relief, but I try to convince myself that it doesn’t matter which one it is.
“I truly thought we might be the victims of a homicide back there.” She reaches over and gently tilts my chin from the right to the left, like she’s examining me. Her face is serious, but the way the corners of her lips quirk up a bit betray her, and I can’t help but heat a little under her stare. “Luckily it seems like you made it out injury-free. What about me?”
She tilts her head up, and I think about reaching over to do the same to her. But I decide against it. I think about the spark that I could swear I felt at the Bake-Off as we cowered underneath that baking sheet. I remind myself that I’m not in this race for that.
So I stuff my hands into my pockets and laugh a little instead.
“You’re good.” I look down the hallway. She starts in the direction of the room, tucking her skateboard under her arm as she walks. “Let’s go stack some chairs.”
Her hair is in two knots on top of her head, and the wisps that are too short to make it into the buns are curling at her neck. It’s the opposite of my own hair, every strand slicked down and tightly arranged so that my curls don’t get too out of control. I like that about her—that she doesn’t care about being so carefully put together.
Every time I see her, she looks like she either just rolled out of bed or spent an hour in the mirror before school doing her best to look carefree. But there’s something about the way she walks, sort of bouncing on the balls of her feet like she doesn’t really want to touch the ground, that tells me it’s a little of both. Like she’s here, but barely. Like she’s already past this place and the things that are happening within it.
When we get into the classroom, Mack flips on the lights and turns back to smile at me as she leans her board against the wall. I take a good look at the bottom of it for the first time.